Who are the 'we continuing in the same path'? (to Juan and all)

:) I could say that about any of the so-called gurus proliferating on the Internet these days. A lot of what I've heard seems like total nonsense. Why not assume it's 'God inspired' nonsense?

Clive: But some of the words they utter contain truth.

We don't know this do we? not until we listen, as you say. The same could be said about the words of our neighbor, the beggar on the corner, the politician, the priest or rabbi or mullah, the Nazi, the man I have some conflict with. Any of those people may utter something that has some truth in it. But don't we know when someone says something that is totally false? If a so called spiritual teacher tells us to recite a mantra a thousand times a day, we might say, nonsense! And some of what is said by a politician or a priest...or Trump... for example, we know right away is nonsense, right?

Mina>>Bravo Wim, exactly it!!!
The fogginess is in the IDEAS of 'what K is talking about', nowhere else!

Wim: since my ego is deadly ill and since euthanasia is impossible
she is under palliative caring,
so I kindly ask you not to feed her with compliments,
because on that energy, she want to live again, you know ;-()

Mina: Ha!!! :-) I have a far greater suggestion to what you say above! :-) We will be using that which the ego is tempted to take personally, (what else can it do but take everything personally by the way, since it is an idea of a person!) to help it in its own dying!! How? :-)

It is especially with compliments etc, which are so directly addressed to the ego, that there appears an excellent opportunity to observe what happens in oneself, an opportunity for awareness to be there and the ego not!! So, what I am saying is that EVERYTHING, WHATEVER happens, is really a Gift, when observed in awareness, stillness. Only awareness can survive in awareness, everything else (the world put together by thought) cannot.

Only awareness does not feed an ego, but all that happens WITHIN the limitation of the observer and observed, in the thought-world, feeds egos, because the very division between the observer and the observed IS the ego!!! And clearly, whatever it does, feeds that limited structure.

Mina Martini wrote:It is especially with compliments etc, which are so directly addressed to the ego, that there appears an excellent opportunity to observe what happens in oneself, an opportunity for awareness to be there and the ego not!! So, what I am saying is that EVERYTHING, WHATEVER happens, is really a Gift, when observed in awareness, stillness. Only awareness can survive in awareness, everything else (the world put together by thought) cannot.

This part in bold is the difficult one, isn't it? Do you really feel this when 'sh*t' happens, Mina? Does anyone? does anyone feel this when their child has a deadly disease? That it's a gift? I'm not saying you're wrong...or right. But seriously, I have anxiety about the health of a loved one, let's say. How can I see their illness and suffering as a gift when I don't? Is there some mental 'trick' to change the fact...'what is'....my reaction to their suffering...and change it to acceptance? When I lose my job and can't pay my rent and get evicted from my apartment, is there some mental (or spiritual) exercise I can do to say to myself....to feel... "yes, this is really a gift"?

Tom Paine wrote (to Mina):But, it's your 'uncommon' usage of simple common words which is adding confusion....not clarity ...to our discussions here, as I see it.

Dan McDermott wrote:
But if Mina is looking at the world through a different 'unconditioned' lens, why not listen to it, as if someone in our 'dream' was whispering softly: "You're dreaming!".

What do you mean “listen as if”, Dan? “As if” complicates things greatly, as I see it. It is a movement away from listening. Why not just listen? Listening doesn’t mean just hearing. It includes sensitivity, awareness, attention, doesn’t it?

But if I say to you “You’re dreaming” in a language you don’t know, you won’t understand it. Or if I were to say to you something like, “Up is down” to mean “You’re dreaming”, you won’t understand it.

Since we do not have a direct connection to each other’s perceptions, we must use words as clearly as we can to understand each other. What are words for if not to communicate (or “commune”)? The underlying meaning cannot be understood if the actual words are not understood.

K took care to speak with clarity, didn’t he? He surely found it difficult to find the “right” words at times. And where we do not immediately understand what he is pointing to, it is not the words themselves that muddy his meaning. Not that we must emulate K, but isn’t it important to be as clear as possible? And isn’t the responsibility for communicating clearly shared equally by speaker and listener?

Dan McDermott wrote:It only understands "gift" as what is beneficial to it or someone or something it cares about. It could never understand, that "everything, whatever happens" is really a gift

How are you using the word 'gift', Dan, other than as something beneficial? Would something harmful be considered a gift, in your mind? Like the diagnosis of cancer for my child? Not trying to be negative, but if we are saying everything is a gift, then war or famine is a gift too? Just as an aside....when K's brother died unexpectedly back in the 1920's, K was in such a state of shock that he went unconscious for three(not totally sure here about how many) days.

Dan McDermott wrote at 48:K said he came not to teach but to "awaken".

As I see it, K’s concern was to awaken intelligence or love, not to awaken the dreamer.

Education and the Significance of Life:

Intelligence is much greater than
intellect, for it is the integration
of reason and love; but there can be
intelligence only when there is
self-knowledge, the deep understanding
of the total process of oneself.

The dreamer can be awakened from sleep, not from illusion. It is intelligence which ends illusion, no?

To me, a dream is the continuation during sleep of the fears etc. which were not faced (“stayed with” as recently talked about) during the waking hours. During the waking hours, self-ignorance - inattention - creates the illusion of "me". During the waking hours, the “dreamer” - self - is an illusion not a dream, isn’t he? Isn’t this a distinction that is important in terms of understanding what "I" actually am?

Dan McDermott wrote at 48:The 'I' process as K calls it has made a hell for us here.

Doesn’t this imply that the “I process” and “us here” are 2 separate things?

Dan McDermott wrote at 50:Could it be that everything that is 'given' to us, 'good' or 'bad', has to (can) be 'transformed' through wisdom and awareness and compassion?

“Everything (‘good’ or ‘bad’) is given to us”, to me, is clearly a concept, conclusion or idea. Sorry, I don't mean to be confrontational. The idea that everything is a gift to us cannot be observed directly as a fact, can it? It is the intellect's idea of what my perception "should be" when war, cancer, praise, etc. happens. It is not a spontaneous perception. Where pain is experienced, the mind does not perceive a gift, does it? Isn’t it thought which comes up with the idea of pain as a gift? Isn’t it thought which breaks down the wholeness of experiencing into separate fragments - “gifts” or “problems”?

But the feelings of fear, pleasure, anger are observed directly as they happen.

To whom are these “gifts” made and who is making them? There is in fact neither “giver” nor “givee, is there?, and no gift. There are events, movements, happenings in the environment and there is experiencing the feelings they evoke.

Are you saying that it is not awareness of the inner - of “what I am” - that is important, but awareness of the outer happenings? Doesn't awareness act on “what I am” - pain and fear where my child is sick, pain and fear where there is war, pleasure when I am praised, etc. Awareness does not act on the events which provoke what I am. It does not cure cancer, it does not end war, it does not prevent praise from being given. So the distinction between the inner and the outer - between the outer gifts and the inner reaction to the gifts - is in fact a distinction without a difference, isn't it?

It is the transformation of the inner, of what I am, which spontaneously transforms my perception, understanding and approach to the outer. It is not 2 separate actions. No?

Huguette . wrote:The idea that everything is a gift to us cannot be observed directly as a fact, can it? It is the intellect's idea of what my perception "should be" when war, cancer, praise, etc. happens. It is not a spontaneous perception

Indeed! You hit the nail on the head with this reply to some totally nonsensical beliefs and ideas about what 'should' be. Can we just deal with facts and not ideals, beliefs, and speculations?

Dan McDermott wrote:The 'I' process as K calls it has made a hell for us here. It only understands "gift" as what is beneficial to it or someone or something it cares about. It could never understand, that "everything, whatever happens" is really a gift.

I close my eyes and sit quietly, aware. Sounds are heard - voices, cars, dogs barking, creaks in the house, and they are observed in silence. There is awareness of the sensations of breathing and of other internal and external body sensations. Shapes of darkness and light appear inside the eyelids. Thoughts arise without choice or effort, and they too are observed in silence. Some of the thoughts are clearly formed, some are barely perceived, barely a vague whisper. Fear, anger, anxiety, arise and are observed in silence.

In such relaxed, silent watchfulness, there is no awareness of anything which is perceived as “everything, whatever happens is really a gift”. How can there be? That is thought, words. Without the words, what is there to be aware of, what is perceived? Can you tell me what is perceived without using the words “everything, whatever happens is really a gift”?

When I say to you that fear is perceived, you understand what that is, don’t you? When I tell you that thoughts are observed, some of them clearly formed and some of them a vague whisper, don’t you understand what it is that is perceived?

When you tell me that “everything is a gift” is perceived, I don’t understand what that is.

When you tell me that “everything is a gift” is perceived, I don’t understand what that is.

Dan: Mina said that, let's see if she has anything to add.

Everything is everything....it is what it is. I may feel an overwhelming sense of beauty and bliss...even the sacred.... when sitting by the ocean watching the sun set over the Atlantic. I may feel an overwhelming sense of horror when reading of some unthinkable genocide in the news. Adding the word 'gift' is obviously an evaluation or a measurement or comparison. The evaluation, "It's a gift" can only exist in relation to its opposite....the opposite being "I hate what is"....'what is' could be the cancer, the threat of job loss, my spouse wants to leave me after 20 years, the racism or anti-Semitism I experience when I walk down the street. Do words like tragedy, 'world crisis', holocaust, misery, ugliness, abuse, suffering, even have any meaning if 'everything is a gift'?
K.: "We see the confusion, the frightful mess, the misery, the starvation, the impending war"

Dan:>I think Mina is saying the same thing: if there is "understanding" (total awareness) of the state of 'what I am' at any moment, that "awareness" itself transforms the state. The 'identification' with it dissolves. The metaphor that she posted above seems to me very apt: "'polluted waters being cleansed when they enter the purity and vastness of the ocean'.." Not an "act of will" at all.

Dan:>I'm looking at this question you pose Tom in this way. K said he came not to teach but to "awaken". Awaken from what? Isn't it from this dream where we see the world as something other than us? That we are apart from it? That we are all alone in it, maybe its victim, clutching to this or that person, thing, for solace, for security? Fearful of this or that happening to us, to those around us? And in this state of being, we've created societies, crazy, mad, violent things...The 'I' process as K calls it has made a hell for us here. It only understands "gift" as what is beneficial to it or someone or something it cares about. It could never understand, that "everything, whatever happens" is really a gift. But as Mina put it, only "when observed in awareness, stillness". That is, life not observed through the limited, narrow, conditioned prism of the 'self'.

Mina: Thank you again Dan, from heart. Your replies feel like a resting place for the soul.

Yes, the mind uses all words radically differently than awareness, stillness. The mind, being duality itself, can only understand limited dualistic meanings, like you well describe with the case of the word 'Gift'. It is giving the words, here to the word 'gift' its own interpretation, which cannot but serve duality, and as it does so, it denies or overlooks the Gift of Awareness which is what the Gift is, in essence.

But the mind, divided into subject and object, thinks that i am talking about, like Tom appears to have understood , someone being for example 'happy about being seriously ill', or 'happy about losing all one's money and job', 'happy about having severe pain' or whatever else..IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT of course.

The Gift is in the UNDERSTANDING AND MEETING IN AWARENESS WHATEVER MIGHT HAPPEN AT THE LEVEL OF EVENTS, THUS TRANSFORMING THE REALITY CREATED BY SORROW (THOUGHT).

(all events, happenings , all experiences, are created by the expreciencer and the experienced as separate.) (in Reality nothing is happening, to no one)

The Gift is in the ending of indentification with thought. This does not mean there may not be grief, sorrow, difficult things to face, illnesses, poverty, whatever...but one is not reacting from the mind, facing things with the mind, but accepting in stillness whatever comes, 'good' and 'bad'.

And what remains is the Stillness, the Awareness, and NOT 'that which comes', because the latter is an experience created by thought, whereas Awareness experiences nothing, and is therefore everything. In this lies the transformation of the world.

Tom:>This part in bold is the difficult one, isn't it? Do you really feel this when 'sh*t' happens, Mina? Does anyone? does anyone feel this when their child has a deadly disease? That it's a gift? I'm not saying you're wrong...or right. But seriously, I have anxiety about the health of a loved one, let's say. How can I see their illness and suffering as a gift when I don't? Is there some mental 'trick' to change the fact...'what is'....my reaction to their suffering...and change it to acceptance? When I lose my job and can't pay my rent and get evicted from my apartment, is there some mental (or spiritual) exercise I can do to say to myself....to feel... "yes, this is really a gift"?

Dan McDermott wrote quoting K.:
"No one has the foggiest idea of what I'm talking about"

That would be an ideal position,

That would make for a hell of a great discussion forum,
if no one had any idea what anyone else was trying to say! ;)
Just a joke, Wim....hope you don't mind.

I don't mind, ( I kind of did it by my unusual reply in # 41) but isn't here a lesson to learn that by very quick assuming, thinking, one understands what the other is talking about one misses the oppurtunity (nice word ;-) ) to go behind the words into a real dialogue which is in my vieu very different from discussion (read Bohm about the root of discussion and dialogue )

I understand what you're pointing to....listening free of ideas.

but also speaking free of ideas !!

Truth will unfold itself for those who enquire their own actions and only to them and for them and to or for no one else.

Mina Martini wrote:The Gift is in the UNDERSTANDING AND MEETING IN AWARENESS WHATEVER MIGHT HAPPEN AT THE LEVEL OF EVENTS, THUS TRANSFORMING THE REALITY CREATED BY SORROW (THOUGHT).

(all events, happenings , all experiences, are created by the expreciencer and the experienced as separate.) (in Reality nothing is happening, to no one)

You lost me with that very last sentence, but I'll comment on the rest. In what way does awareness meet the horror of war or genocide...the crucifixion...ANY such event? I lost a loved one to suicide as you know. I never think of it now. It was many years ago, but at the time it wasn't a gift to see them suffer. It was like Hell. I hate to talk of these things as it can possibly make one depressed, but if you see 'everything is a gift', it's not clear how you see the 'world crisis' that K spoke of....the 'house on fire'...the overwhelming misery of great poverty...starvation. Not sure what it would mean to 'meet all that in awareness'. Total awareness of starvation or suicide or war would't transform those events. That's why K spoke for 50 + years. He clearly did'nt see those events as a 'gift'. Because his state of awareness or intelligence didn't change the world's suffering....did't transform the world, he felt that he needed to awaken that intelligence in others.

Mina Martini wrote:The Gift is in the ending of indentification with thought. This does not mean there may not be grief, sorrow, difficult things to face, illnesses, poverty, whatever...but one is not reacting from the mind, facing things with the mind, but accepting in stillness whatever comes, 'good' and 'bad'.

I'll have to take some time to try to digest what you say above, Mina. What you say in the first sentence may in fact be a gift, yet the 'sorrow' and 'difficult things to face' are clearly not a gift(the death of a child or homelessness, for instance). Maybe we can call them 'challenges'. When there is a challenge we don't stand back from it and think of it as a gift... or not. We must act. Sorry, but it's not clear what you're trying to get across.

Bravo Wim, exactly it!!!
The fogginess is in the IDEAS of 'what K is talking about', nowhere else!
Wim: since my ego is deadly ill and since euthanasia is impossible
she is under palliative caring,
so I kindly ask you not to feed her with compliments,
because on that energy, she want to live again, you know ;-()

Mina: Ha!!! :-) I have a far greater suggestion to what you say above! :-)
We will be using that which the ego is tempted to take personally, (what else can it do but take everything personally by the way, since it is an idea of a person!) to help it in its own dying!! How? :-)

It is especially with compliments etc, which are so directly addressed to the ego, that there appears an excellent opportunity to observe what happens in oneself, an opportunity for awareness to be there and the ego not!! So, what I am saying is that EVERYTHING, WHATEVER happens, is really a Gift, when observed in awareness, stillness. Only awareness can survive in awareness, everything else (the world put together by thought) cannot.

I’m aware of that Mina, as I ‘am also aware of the possibility that the “I”-process is starting all over again, both in good times as in bad times. And that awareness is also a gift because through that “I”am not longer active in that process !!

If “I am the world”, I should also take this opportunity into account.

Truth will unfold itself for those who enquire their own actions and only to them and for them and to or for no one else.

Mina Martini wrote:Tom:And how does this wisdom enter the picture if I'm NOT wise? "Could it be...?" What you wrote sounds like pure speculation.

Mina: Tom, that very question is the mind coming into the way of perception, taking the space away from anything else than its own continuation and speculation, to take place!

Ah, I see. I suffer and somehow this wisdom that Dan spoke of will miraculously enter the picture. Is that it? But don't I look for this wisdom that Dan spoke of when I suffer?
That was Dan's 'could it be' that I was replying to, though of course you are free to share your view, Mina. There's suffering...that is a fact. Someone speaks of wisdom and awareness and compassion, as Dan did. Naturally I'm interested in trading my suffering for a little wisdom. But I don't know anything about wisdom. Are you telling me to not ask questions....that wisdom will miraculously appear by itself? Is this what you tell one who suffers?

But don't I look for this wisdom that Dan spoke of when I suffer?
When I suffer (psychologically), the usual reaction is to run from it somehow. What happens if I don't?

Thanks Dan. At least you are attempting to address my question....to take it seriously. Mina seems to brush it off a little too quickly seeming to imply that one shouldn't ask questions at all.

Dan McDermott wrote:>The 'self' IS the suffering and there's nothing that 'it' can do about it but try to escape it. And the trying to escape (trade it in) only perpetuates and strengthens the 'self'.

Interesting statement in bold. This of course goes totally contrary to what 'I' think. That the suffering and 'me' are separate....that I can act upon the suffering....be it fear, anger, craving, greed. I feel like I want to explore this further, but work is calling. Will return later time permitting.

Dan McDermott wrote:When I suffer (psychologically), the usual reaction is to run from it somehow. What happens if I don't?

Since we've been discussing suffering...not wisdom, which we don't know...I did a quick search and found this from K:

"When the thought process comes to an end - which is to understand suffering and not escape from it - suffering, which is not only on the superficial level but at different levels of consciousness, is transcended. This means we must be open, vulnerable to suffering. You are suffering, with an occasional ray of sunshine.

Since you suffer, why not understand it thoroughly and resolve it finally? This cessation of sorrow is not so difficult. For a mind that is caught in the net of suffering, it is more difficult to search out God, for He is the unknown and you cannot search for the unknown. But you can be aware of suffering, and in this awareness the cause of it is known. Since you run away from sorrow through many forms of escape, be aware of these escapes, and come directly, actually, face to face with suffering. Only then can sorrow come to an end."

I should not try to speak for Mina, but the meaning that I put upon "everything is a gift" is that we can learn from any challenge. That learning may be insight that transforms our perception, annd so transforms the mind.

The idea that everything is a gift to us cannot be observed directly as a fact, can it?

Dan replied to the above as follows:

**It can but not if the 'observer is not the observed' state

(obviously he means 'in' instead of 'if' )

Mina continues: Yes. It is only when the mind (which is the same as the observer is not the observed- state) receives the utterance of 'everything being a gift' (or any other utterance!!), that the words are being turned into an idea.

It is actually only through a reaction from the mind that the mind is born, at any moment. No reaction, no mind.

If met with in stillness, the words 'everything is a gift' have an altogether different meaning that does not stand apart from silence and does not form any ideas at all.

In my view, you speak as an authority. I cannot comply with authority in these matters. If you're satisfied that your understanding ----- whether it is that everything is a gift, or that rejecting that statement can only be turning it into an idea, or whether it concerns global human chaos and disorder, conflict in action and relationship, self-ignorance, sorrows, confusion, fears, wars, cruelty, selfishness, desires, pursuit of pleasure, ambitions, greed, conceits, and so on ----- is true to the facts, I won't argue. I'm not interested in trying to convince anyone. As I see it, your approach to understanding oneself and the world is the same old approach, with a different verbal style and vocabulary, which further muddies what is being looked at. That IS how I see it. Sorry.

There's no point in talking things over with authority, no “journeying together, walking together on the same path [...] on the same road, with the same attention, with the same intensity, at the same time [...] there is no communication". [Third Conversation with Dr Allan W. Anderson in San Diego, California 19 February 1974]

It is so arduous to look into oneself and to put one's perceptions into words, so I will not waste energy in talking things over with authority.

Clive Elwell wrote:I should not try to speak for Mina, but the meaning that I put upon "everything is a gift" is that we can learn from any challenge. That learning may be insight that transforms our perception, annd so transforms the mind.

So the Holocaust was a gift to the Jews so they can learn...suffering purifies? That old craziness? Well how could the Jews learn from the Holocaust? They were exterminated! The witches of Salem, Mass.(and elsewhere, I should add) who were burned at the stake?

Dan McDermott wrote:As I'm seeing, thinking about this idea of "authority", for me there is only one and that is 'thought', 'my' thought. Whether I adopt or reject the words, ideas of another, it is my thought that is in the center always

Sure, but my thought is the result of the authority of the Church, the priest, the guru, the politician, the parents, teachers. And K pointed out the danger of ANY of it...the reason why he felt that 'spiritual authority...the guru... was an abomination. Authority is what has created us 'me'/'you'/'we'. The one who feeds this is the danger he pointed to.

Dan McDermott wrote:'Gurus' aren't the problem as I'm seeing it, it's 'believing' in what they say that is. Because 'thought' needs the security of believing that it's 'right'. (on the 'right' side) so it picks up this and discards that...

You don't feel that authorities of all kinds have mislead man over the centuries? Of course it's 'my' belief in what they say that's an issue as well. It's all one consciousness which is based upon authority. The priest tells the little child that he must be good and not be a sinner. Don't you think there's danger there? Got to run. Interesting topic. Will look into it further.